1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a communication and teaching system including a communication aid to facilitate and improve the communication skills of nonverbal, speech and/or language impaired individuals and a method for implementing the system. The communication and teaching system of the present invention is specifically designed to be user-friendly and to be readily adaptable for use by individuals having a mental level sufficient to distinguish and/or differentiate informative indicia in the form of pictorial representations and/or alphabetical or numeric displays, as well as some manual motor ability in order to physically manipulate structural components which make up the system.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has long been recognized that individuals who are either non-verbal or speech-impaired and/or autistic individuals have many problems in terms of communicating with others, not to mention communicating their basic needs and desires. Attempts have been made in the art to improve the communication skills and/or the effective semantic and/or syntactic skills of such individuals, which include devices and techniques geared towards establishing communication but also towards aiding the individual with developing an increased vocabulary, morphology and syntax which would enable him/her to communicate with others on at least some minimal but effective level.
One problem associated with increasing the communication skills of verbally challenged individuals is the wide range of mental levels of individuals affected with such handicaps. For example, the more mentally aware one of these individuals is, the easier it is to open lines of communication by utilizing relatively conventional devices such as books, drawings, flash cards and other more specialized or unique apparatus. However, the utilization of such known devices assumes that the challenged individual possesses certain "normal" communicative skills, such as reading or that the individual has the mental facilities to recognize basic emotions including anger, sadness, etc. In addition, many of these known devices are directed to increasing a challenged individuals capabilities in a certain area, such as reading, mathematics, spelling, and psychotherapeutic communication and in general, and are not directed to enhancing the overall ability of the individual to communicate, linguistically or otherwise.
While known communication improving devices of the type set forth above may be considered to be effective for their intended purposes, it is generally acknowledged that they are somewhat deficient in the establishment of lasting communicative skills which allow a verbally challenged individual to communicate both in an expressive and receptive manner, while at the same time, continuously increasing the individual's effective vocabulary with the additional advantage of allowing the individual to create his or her own communicative "statements."
Accordingly, there is a need in the field of teaching and communication aids for a system, method and associated apparatus directed to verbally challenged individuals which are capable of use despite the wide range of the mental levels possessed by such individuals. Preferably, any such system, method and associated apparatus should also serve to greatly increase the individual's effective vocabulary, syntax and/or morphology and functional pragmatic skills, and even more preferably, should be adaptable for use by individuals facing a variety of challenges, including but not limited to non-verbal individuals as well as those suffering from autism, cerebral palsy, mental deficiency, etc. or any combination of these afflictions. Any such communication system, method and apparatus should also be readily used in combination with other well-accepted and effective educational communication aids, techniques and/or programs, and further, should enhance the receptive and expressive language skills which include semantics, syntax and/or morphology and functional pragmatic skills, even though the individual may be non-verbal, speech-impaired and/or language impaired. Given the challenges faced by these types of individuals, any such communication system should also be "user friendly" in terms of the design of the apparatus and various components associated therewith, so as to be easily recognizable and accessible by the individual utilizing the system and apparatus. In addition, any such communication and/or teaching system, method or apparatus should have sufficient versatility so as to promote inter-disciplinary "team" action between the challenged individual, an occupational therapist and a speech pathologist, and should also be adaptable to the specific needs and limitations of challenged individuals having unique or less common communicative restrictions or challenges. Finally, any such system should also provide a substantially organized and variable structure which is easy for a user to identify and implement, so as to render it readily useable in an ongoing communicative environment and so as to improve the organization skills of the challenged individual.
It would be ideal if any such communication system were developed which could also address the needs of such individuals who have the mental ability to discriminate pictures, to comprehend the written word, written phrases and/or sentences, and who have the motor coordination skills so as to permit such individuals to mentally and manually manipulate apparatus associated with such a system to utilize pictures, words, or commonly used phrases to convey a message to another, namely, to a recipient or "listener". It would also be ideal if any such communication system were also capable of being adapted for use with autistic children and mentally handicapped individuals which require and respond to structure and repetitive design. The associated and various components of any such communication system should, therefore, be designed to make it easy for such individuals to use and thereby, increase both communication and pragmatic skills.